There is a positive perception of the US military in host countries---brings economic benefits to the recipient nation---Chinese military expansion is no better.

Conclusions This research marks the first of its kind in studying mass attitudes towards the U.S. mil- itary deployments in their host countries. Surveying over 14,000 people across 14 countries, we find important trends with implications for both foreign policy-making and international relations theory. We argue that U.S. leadership during the post-War era relied not only on government policies, but also on the acceptance of foreign populations. The U.S. military, traditionally considered an instrument of hard power, also plays a part in building soft power and influencing perceptions of U.S. actors. Our results suggest that contact with members of the U.S. military may reduce prejudice against U.S. actors and build more positive perceptions of them. This relationship exists even when taking into account the effect of economic benefits. Interpersonal contact may increase both positive and negative views. Intuitively this finding makes sense—media and historical accounts of the U.S. military’s presence in other countries are full of stories of social ills, including crime, environmental degradation, and more. Our findings also indicate that these negative accounts may suffer from selection bias, and, in line with contact theory, show that interactions with U.S. military personnel correlate with more positive attitudes of U.S. actors. Alternatively, the economic benefits that flow from the U.S. military presence in a state correlate with a reduced probability that individuals express negative views of various U.S. actors, while in some cases also correlating with a higher probability that individuals express positive views. This work represents an important contribution to international relations theory and our understanding of the microfoundations of U.S. leadership and the domestic underpinnings of hierarchical and contractual security relationships. In particular, our results suggest that U.S. military deployments may help build support for the U.S. government and its policies through the transfer of economic resources. Governments and leaders may have slack when negotiating away sovereignty to the U.S. in various areas of foreign policy, but that slack may be substantially reduced when foreign publics hold more negative views of the U.S. and its agents. This analysis represents a critical step insofar as it establishes the correlates of mass attitudes towards U.S. military deployments, but more work is required to better understand how, and when, such attitudes translate into actual pressure on government officials. Large, long-term military deployments represent significant investments by both the U.S. and host-country, and these considerations must be balanced against host politicians’ short-term political realities and the likelihood that initially narrow public grievances may develop into something greater. These findings also have substantive policy implications. Given the centrality of global military deployments to U.S. foreign policy, understanding mass attitudes towards those deployments can aid policymakers in better understanding the sources of support and oppo- sition foreign leaders face among their publics when dealing with the U.S. Fostering positive perceptions of its military personnel could allow the U.S. government to more easily estab- lish favorable basing and status of force agreements with foreign states. Cooley and Nexon (2013) note that the U.S. basing network exists due to common security interests and shared values. Where those interests and values are viewed as lacking, host governments may be more resistant to U.S. wishes. One strategy that the U.S. has pursued is to create stake- holders that go beyond the government. Thus, promoting more positive views of the U.S. among foreign publics may contribute to the creation of favorable agreements. These results stand in contrast with Goldsmith and Horiuchi (2009, 872) who find that high-level U.S. ef- forts at public diplomacy are not effective at countering negative images and news coverage. Our results suggest that lower-level and “unintended” efforts at public diplomacy may yield different results. At present no other state rivals the United States in size and scope of its overseas military presence. As other countries like China begin to expand their military influence abroad they will likely have to deal with many of the same concerns as the United States. Until now, members of the general public in states where the U.S. has had a military presence view China as having economic, not military interests (Interview with Panamanian Journalist 2018). This is likely to change as China expands its global military footprint. As one British Member of Parliament noted during our interviews, regarding British inaction with respect to the Chinese taking control of the port of Piraeus in Greece, “Are we mad? How stupid do we have to be?” (Interview with British Member of Parliament #1 2019). Countries like Djibouti, which hosts military forces from the U.S., China, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, provide interesting early opportunities for examining how mass attitudes towards foreign military deployments vary by sender country.